From NetFlix:

This coming-of-age drama set in the 1960s is another one of Stephen King’s short stories adapted for the big screen. Anthony Hopkins plays an elderly man with bad eyesight and a second sight who’s a boarder in a widower’s home. He befriends the woman’s young son, who reads to him and learns of his mysterious power and the danger he’s trying to escape. On the heels of the success of King’s The Green Mile, this film’s tepid reviews surprised many.

Anthony Hopkins has not been a consistently good actor. In fact, as I see it, he has been in some really second-rate movies and his acting at times has been horrible (examples: Dracula or The Mask of Zorro). In “Hearts in Atlantis” he is acceptable. It is the story that held my attention. You do have to suspend some disbelief because the supposedly 11 year old boy has some lines that are just too mature and observant for a kid that age. And did J. Edgar Hoover, for all his cross-dressing faults, really employ psychics to fight communism ? Maybe I should read the original Stephen King short story. I would still call this a feel-good, but not for children (who might not understand the mother’s rape scene). There is one bashing scene, but this is not a violent film.